“When was this?” I said as some of it came back to me a bit—the meetings in my father’s living room, the sound of loud, self-righteous voices and ice clinking in glasses and hollow threats delivered in refeRenee to the car thieves and B&E operators and graffiti artists of the neighborhood.

“I don’t know.” Bubba yawned. “I was stealing hubcaps back then, so I was probably just out of the crib. We were maybe, like, eleven or twelve. Probably seventy-four or-five. Right around busing, yeah.”

“And my father and Jack Rouse…”

“Were the leaders. And then there was, like, lemme see—Paul Burns and Terry Climstich and some small guy always wore a tie, didn’t live in the neighborhood long, and like, oh yeah, two women. I’ll never forget it—they bust me clipping caps off Paul Burns’s car and they’re putting the boots to me, no big deal, but I look up and I see two chicks doing it. I mean, Christ.”

“Who were the women?” I said. “Bubba?”

“Emma Hurlihy and Diedre Rider. You believe that? A couple of chicks kicking my ass. Crazy world. Huh?”

“Gotta go, Bubba. Call you soon. Okay?”

I hung up and dialed Bolton.

28

“What did these people do?” Angie said.

We were standing over her coffee table with Bolton, Devin, Oscar, Erdham, and Fields, all of us staring down at copies of a photo Fields had acquired by waking the editor of The Dorchester Community Sun, a local weekly that had been covering the neighborhoods since 1962.

The photo was from a puff piece done on neighborhood watch groups the week of June 12, 1974. Under the headline NEIGHBORS WHO CARE, the article gushed about the daring exploits of the EEPA, as well as the Adams Corner Neighborhood Watch in Neponset, the Savin Hill Community League, the Field’s Corner Citizens Against Crime, and the Ashmont Civic Pride Protectors.

My father was quoted in the third column: “I’m a fireman, and one thing firemen know is that you have to stop a fire in the low floors, before it gets out of control.”

“Your old man had a feel for the sound bite,” Oscar said. “Even back then.”

“It was one of his favorite sayings. He’d had years of practice with it.”

Fields had blown up the photo of the EEPA members and there they stood on the basketball court of the Ryan Playground, trying to look mean and friendly at the same time.

My father and Jack Rouse were kneeling at the center of the group, on either side of an EEPA sign with shamrocks in the upper corners. They both looked like they were posing for football cards, as if emulating the stance of defensive linemen, fists dug into the ground, opposite hands holding up the sign.

Behind them stood a very young Stan Timpson, the only person wearing a tie, followed from left to right by Diedre Rider, Emma Hurlihy, Paul Burns, and Terry Climstich.

“What’s this?” I said and pointed at a tiny bar of black to the right of the photo.